The Cancer Center Tissue Core, under the direction of Britt-Marie Ljung, is completing the process of consolidating tissue procurement and distribution and ensuring that it conforms to standardized policies and procedures. The tissue core sets the standards for the use of human tissue across all research programs at the Cancer Center and provides oversight and guidance for all Cancer Center tissue research for common issues including tissue consent, database, and quality control. For historical reasons, tissue collection and banking was managed at the program level, and support was largely through Program Project or SPORE grants. To aid in the centralization of tissue resources, the Cancer Center has formed a central hub, the Tissue Core, which employs personnel to collect tissue from Mount Zion, Parnassus, California Pacific Medical Center and San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) using standardized methods that are in-line with current IRB regulations. Tissue is then banked either in the central facility or off-site in affiliated banks on the UCSF campus. To facilitate tracking and access to these tissue resources, a web-based database was designed and implemented to provide an inventory of the data that can be accessed by users across multiple programs. This database virtually unites all the tissue banks and provides contact information for those seeking tissue from a specific source. The system was developed through interaction with the Informatics Core. Material in the tissue bank comes from patients at the four hospitals listed above, and is distributed to support meritorious cancer research at UCSF. The Tissue Core also works with clinical cores, such as the Familial Cancer Risk Core, to bank and distribute blood and tissue collected from patients at UCSF or from patients at hospitals off-site. In the past three years, the Tissue Core has also offered routine histology services, including tissue sectioning, staining, histologic interpretation, immunohistochemistry and tissue microarray preparation. With the increase in demand for tissue collection and distribution, the immunohistochemistry and molecular analysis function will be developed as a separate core service.